Month: June 2015

Joseph Church received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. He works as a freelance preparator and art installer in Chicago.

The paintings in this series of work are very much planned out and designed. Most of my artistic decisions involving color, shape and composition are made and finalized early on in my process. The paintings are crisp and linear with large areas of flat color saturating the entire canvas. Each line is carefully hand drawn and each shape is carved out by the line. The deliberate and precise style in which I work makes my imagery appear as if it has been programmed or machined.

Francisco Magos is a Chicago based artist who is currently focused on color,and lots of it. Most of his time is spent creating art of many mediums that have been put in front of him, such as oil,acrylic,watercolor, ink,ceramics,sculptures on various items(traditional and non- traditional) canvas,wood panels, books,and found objects. All of Francisco’s art is inspired by his ex-fast paced way of life. In that life, colors were vivid and so were the troubles. His current working method mainly consists of spray painting on anything he can get his hands on.

The piece is called, “Master Relaxer Silver”, and is acrylic on stretched canvas, 36″x48″.

Mostly self taught. I never intended to be an artist. It just became a necessity. I took one beginning painting class for therapy after I started getting chronic headaches. Doctors and self-medicating was not helping. What did I have to lose? I had not even taken art in high school.Creating art has given me positive goals for the future.

My Art is trying to capture the subliminal ironies and absurdities of events, words, and things, real or imagined. This is for my need of comprehension, and my need to create beauty with an alternate reality. To share this is also desired.

“Master Relaxer Silver”, is about my job as a construction worker. Some times materials for the job would be moved for no reason. It was discovered that the boss was doing this because it helped him relax. So to move something has become to relax. The forklift moves the most stuff. So it is the master relaxer.

I first paint the central figure in the piece, then the surrounding background. Then I outline the piece and add accents.

Born and raised in Rapid City, SD, Christie has had a lifelong love of all things in art, science, and nature. She has done art projects and experiments her whole life. As both a scientist and artist, she has a unique, experimental approach to art that gives her art an individual style and feel.

Christie began working with body prints in 2003. Initially an exercise in shapes and prints that she could make with her body, body prints became a symbol of her embracing her figure and shape. Making something beautiful with your body makes you embrace the perceived flaws.

Using only her body and hands to paint, she experiments with different methods of throwing, splashing, and dripping as well as different thicknesses and types of paint. These techniques allow Christie to give her abstract body prints additional form when desired.

As a lover of the water and former competitive swimmer, Christie wanted to integrate herself into a fish body print; the fish from the Los Pescados collection show this integration. These two completely different creatures share similar features, in somewhat comparable ratios, allowing Christie to integrate her face into that of the fish, her arms into fins, and her feet into the tail.

My name is Wess Haubrich, I am 28 years old and a self trained photographer from Western IL (Quincy). I have developed my process through trial and error, and what I call the innate “search for angle” both emotional (psychologic), and purely aesthetic. I will be starting the BFA program at Quincy University in August with the highest art scholarship possible (the Fr. Tom F. Browne, OFM award) based on my work. I have also shown twice around Chicago, about 7 times in and around St. Louis, and will be showing another rural piece in Greensboro, GA this July. I am also being interviewed for a 14 page spread in the 7th Edition of the European LandEScape Art Review.

Photography for me has been a great catharsis for my sometimes debilitating clinical depression and anxiety. I believe art saves lives in that capacity. That being said, my aesthetic is very VERY influenced by film noir (especially Orson Welles and David Lynch) and southern gothic (specifically William Faulkner). This confluence can particularly be seen in my “rural noir” series of which “history runs red” is a piece. My other two major series are “urban noir” and “memento mori” (primarily Victorian burial statuary). We think cities, monochrome, and the urban when we think of “film noir” but there is so much room for painting the psychological palette too which transcends yet is very influenced by environment. That being said, my methods of monochrome and selective coloring I think can really hit home. Simplicity, and bringing out one’s intended subject at one’s intended angle is key to great photography.

In terms of my gear, I use a simple Nikon D3200 with only the out of the box wide angle and telephoto lenses for my digital shots. I like to limit the lenses I use not for cost reasons, but because doing so effectively forces the photographer to think more concisely about composition and to get physically closer to the subject. When I shoot film, (depending upon the type) I shoot everything from a Diana F+ 120 to a (still functioning) Voigtlander Bessa to a Canon Rebel that I bought for $15.00 on Ebay.

Ask a class of first graders if there are any artists in the room and they will all raise their hands. My hand’s still up.

My Art Is Inspired By…

The process of painting truly makes me happy, I am often told that viewing my work makes others feel happy. I suppose I am inspired by the universal quest for human happiness and sharing what I find.

My Current Working Method Is…

I tend to work on several painting, with a similar theme and in a variety of sizes, at the same time. I work on canvas and begin by building up textural layers with a variety of acrylic paints and mediums. During this phase I move from piece to piece painting a layer at a time. Once that acrylic stage is completed I finish the work with oils in varying degrees of translucency. In the final oil stage I focus on each individual painting and see it through until completion.

I am a sculptor/illustrator based in Chicago. I am originally from NYC and started doing illustration before I came to Chicago. I became interested in sculpting while in school, and decided to take on ceramics. Clay is something that is more fluid and direct to work with, and I found that way of working very challenging but rewarding at the same time. I like to make hand-built organic sculptures, but also do some illustrations on the side.

My Art is Inspired By…My art is inspired by underwater worlds, Miyazaki movies, and the supernatural..

My current working method is to hole up in my studio and pretend to know what I’m doing!